Strike another one against the pill

At the risk of sounding like a crusty old goat (again), isn’t this a high price to pay for sterile sex? We’re talking about teenagers, here, not adult women.

When it comes to birth control, it’s widely believed that the lower the hormone dose, the better. But according to a new study, pills with lower levels of estrogen may interfere with the bone development of teenagers. Dr. Jan Stepan of Charles University in Prague found that teens who took low-dose pills experienced lower levels of bone growth and bone density compared with those who took higher-dose pills. The reason, says Stepan, is that lower levels of estrogen suppress the body’s release of the hormone but does not fully replace it.